— Melania Trump, Futurist

Ah, yes, I can’t wait for my children to learn from an embodied AI. And that their access to everything be “instantaneous.” No struggle. No unreliable (fleshy) teachers. Just an embodied AI stuffed with the “entire corpus of information.” What an inspiring vision!

Regular listeners to Future Around & Find Out will know that I’m a fan of robots (think: self-driving cars), but really don’t understand why they need arms and legs (whether dog- or human-shaped).

Well, as you may have seen our fever dream of AI with arms and legs reached the White House, with Melania and “Figure 3” competing to see which one could walk and talk more haltingly. (The robot was more engaging to listen to.)

The robot was there, along with a patronizing display of first spouses from around the world, for a summit on education technology. So Kwaku and I use it as a jumping off point for this week’s FAFO Friday (yes, delivered on a Saturday) this week.

Kwaku, a tech consultant to many schools, and I discuss this insatiable need for humanoid robots, AI, and instant gratification. And, following up on my conversation earlier this week with Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, Kristin DiCerbo, we discuss what counts as a “productive struggle” and what’s wasted effort when it comes to AI and learning.

Please enjoy this very human conversation… full of totally unnecessary tangents, riffs, asides, non-sequiturs, and other detours that Plato, the humanoid teacher, would find inefficient and useless. 🙂

---
Subscribe to the Future Around & Find Out newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com

So what the heck should kids be studying today!?

That's my opening question to Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, a learning and AI expert who is back for her second appearance on the show.

We discuss:

• Kristen's advice for what to study today: fundamentals, AI literacy, and critical thinking
• How helpful should AI be?
• Why the productive struggle is critical to learning, but also why we shouldn't "fetishize" struggle
• When should AI be Socratic — "and why do you think that?" — and when should it just give you the answer?
• The "5% problem" — why edtech that's proven to work still barely gets used
• How Khan Academy overhauled its classroom platform and evolved Khanmigo from a standalone chatbot into something woven into the whole learning experience
• Personalization that actually works
• How Khan Academy uses LLMs as judges to evaluate 20,000 student interactions a day
• The scenario planning report that imagines deepfakes of school principals and AI going underground in schools
• What parents should be asking their kids' schools about AI right now
• What it looks like when a school implements AI well — and what it looks like when they don't

Chapters:

• (01:44) - What the heck should kids be studying right now?
• (03:55) - Teaching critical thinking in the age of AI
• (06:37) - What successful schools are doing differently
• (08:37) - The real risk: not that kids use AI too much, but that they don't use it enough
• (10:52) - My 13-year-old has to check five apps just to find his homework
• (11:52) - "Beyond the AI inflection point" — three scenarios, none of them great
• (16:30) - Should we just make every school a trade school?
• (19:41) - What should parents be asking their kids' schools?
• (22:27) - Khan Academy's Winchester Mystery House problem
• (26:28) - Personalized learning — what works and what surprisingly doesn't
• (29:32) - Kids are bad at asking questions and that's actually the point
• (32:01) - "I DON'T KNOW" in all capital letters — the Socratic method's breaking point
• (34:26) - Should an AI tutor give tough love?
• (37:01) - Why Khanmigo is fundamentally different from ChatGPT
• (40:11) - Don't fetishize struggle — but your kid still needs it
• (42:39) - Khan Academy's productive struggle: building evals from scratch
• (45:41) - What gives Kristen optimism

• Follow Dan on LinkedIn
• Get the free Future Around & Find Out newsletter
• Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!

Sponsor the show?

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: dan@futurearound.com

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben

South By Southwest was strange this year. No convention center to anchor the event (it’s a giant hole in the ground right now, being rebuilt from scratch, much like [insert your analogy here] will also need to be rebuilt in the age of AI).

This South By was a all about convergence. How AI will impact [xyz] continues to be the dominant theme at the conference and in so much tech coverage (including on this podcast; sorry!).

So, Kwaku and I report on the convergences we saw (and not only at Amy Webb’s annual talk where “convergence” was her key word). This includes everything from:

• the RoboCup, a quest (a la Deep Blue winning at chess) for humanoid robots to be able to defeat a team of great humans at soccer
• pants that you wear (or do they wear you) that are kind of like an e-bike for your legs
• an AI-powered Cyrano de Bergerac that can help you whisper sweet nothings in your lover’s ear
• falling in love with an AI (and their business model)
• and AI that can tell you whether to have another slice of brisket (yes, duh, you’re in Austin!)

So, come on along to Austin for what’s become an annual tradition: Kwaku and my SXSW Rooftop Revue.

This year recorded in fabulous 4K with a three camera setup that we didn’t deserve! Big thanks to Podcast Movement Evolutions, Nomono, The Podcast Academy, and Simplecast!

And stay tuned for a few more episodes from a wild week!

Chapters:

• (00:25) - SXSW 2026: everything everywhere all at once
• (01:23) - Kwaku stumbles into a World Economic Forum session on convergence
• (05:54) - Reinforcement learning and robot soccer
• (09:07) - Amy Webb's three convergences: emotional outsourcing, unlimited labor, human augmentation
• (09:55) - Pants that are an e-bike for your legs
• (11:27) - The mental tax of running a fleet of AI agents
• (13:28) - Your boss wants you to pay for your own augmentation
• (16:07) - Esther Perel, Spike Jonze, and falling in love with Her business model
• (18:55) - An AI Cyrano de Bergerac to help you win your lover’s heart
• (25:30) - IRL is the antidote!

• Get the newsletter, support the show, check out past episodes: https://www.futurearound.com